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Now, it would always be too late for Carrie and Claire to rebuild their relationship.
It would always be too late for Carrie to say,I’m sorry.
ONE
Let yourself in. Key’s under the plant pot.
Carrie Anderson pulled the note off the blue-painted wooden door, carefully unsticking its tape from the paint so as not to damage it, and nudged the closest plant pot with her foot.
Sure enough, halfway under, there was a small plastic bag which, when she picked it up, contained two keys on a keyring for the whitewashed cottage that looked out over the still waters of Loch Cameron. When Carrie opened the bag, she found that the keyring’s fob featured the logo of Loch Cameron Distillery, and a picture of a woman’s face with the words OLD MAIDS superimposed on it.
She remembered the whisky distillery; lots of these small Scottish villages were home to them. She didn’t know a huge amount about whisky, but she’d picked up some knowledge here and there, like everyone with a Scottish family had. Her dad, when he was alive, had drunk whisky. He’d drunk it every summer when they’d visited Great-Aunt Maud when she and Claire were little.
But that was a long time ago, and it had been a while since she’d visited the village.
Carrie let herself into the cottage, shaking rain from her waterproof jacket and stepping out of her boots on the welcome mat. It was October, so she’d come prepared for bad weather, packing plenty of thick jumpers, thick socks and sturdy trainers.
Her great-aunt had lived just five cottages away from this one. Sadly, when Maud died, the cottage had returned to the Laird, who owned it. Carrie remembered that he owned almost all the property here, most people renting their houses and cottages from him. For whatever reason, though, this little cottage on the same cracked mud walkway as Great-Aunt Maud’s had been available to rent on a holiday website, and when she’d seen it, she’d booked it instantly.
Inside the cottage, Carrie was pleased to find that it was as cosy as Great-Aunt Maud’s had been. Gretchen Ross’s cottage on Queen’s Point – the strip of land that ran alongside Loch Cameron, with a tongue-like promontory that reached over the loch, where Gretchen’s cottage stood – had just one large bedroom, whereas Great-Aunt Maud’s had had two. Even then, it had meant that Claire and Carrie had slept in Great-Aunt Maud’s old-fashioned lounge, while their parents had taken the small second bedroom. Carrie and Claire had always loved staying there, not caring about their squeaky pull-out beds with their archaic metal frames, or the roll-out mattresses that made them sneeze. They had loved waking up on cold mornings and watching their breath make clouds in front of them, then waiting for their great-aunt to rouse herself and build up the log fire in the old fireplace and then make them hot chocolate.
Ideally, Carrie would have liked to go back to Great-Aunt Maud’s old place, but Gretchen’s cottage was a close second. It was a familiar-feeling place where she could hide away and not see anyone else, if she didn’t feel like it; a place she could be alone and walk in nature without being disturbed.
A place she could grieve, and a place that reminded her of happier times.
Carrie dropped her bag inside the door and stood for a moment at the entrance to the small lounge, taking it in. There was always the risk that an old Scottish cottage might smell of mildew and be full of spiders, but this place seemed to have had some recent love and care, and a thorough dusting, which was a relief. Floral wallpaper covered the cosy sitting room. An authentic-looking fireplace with light green tiles patterned with pink roses acted as a centrepiece, and a comfy upholstered chair with a hydrangea pattern, a vintage pink chaise longue and a plain cream sofa took up the rest of the space. There was a brass standard lamp with a green velvet lampshade in the corner that Carrie flicked on, alleviating the slight gloom in the cottage from the rain outside.
Loch Cameron was difficult to get to by train, and by car it was at the end of a long, winding unlit road through vast hills covered in purple heather that it was unwise to take by night. It wasn’t close to anywhere in particular, apart from similarly small villages, and often, when Carrie had mentioned it to people over the years, hardly anyone had heard of it. Yet it was the place where she had been happiest in her life, before illness had taken her mother when Carrie and Claire were just twelve years old.
After their mum had died, they hadn’t come back to Loch Cameron. Great-Aunt Maud had stayed in touch, writing them letters at Christmas and on their birthdays, but Carrie and Claire’s dad had refused to take them back to visit. Great-Aunt Maud was their mother’s aunt, he’d said, and now that Mum was gone, he didn’t have to pretend to like that mildewed old cottage and the even more mildewed old aunt.
The girls had gone back, once, when they were eighteen and their dad had said he couldn’t stop them. But by the time they got there, Maud had already died: they hadn’t known.
Carrie sighed as she remembered her and Claire driving all the way up from Manchester in Claire’s old Mini – her first car. She’d always loved them. When they’d got to Loch Cameron, they’d forgotten exactly where the cottage was, so they’d had to ask at the inn. A kindly woman in a twinset and a tweed skirt had directed them up to Queen’s Point, where they’d discovered Maud’s cottage empty.
In Gretchen’s cottage kitchen, Carrie discovered a blue leather Chesterfield-style chair which faced a blackened fireplace. The armchair looked comfortable, despite the fact that it was losing some of its stuffing. A large wooden dresser stood at one end of the kitchen, showcasing a beautiful array of vintage crockery, and the large window overlooked a rainy and slightly overgrown cottage garden.
Carrie filled a copper kettle with water and placed it on the old range cooker, looking for an ignition button. She couldn’t see one, but there was a box of matches next to the hob, so she turned on the gas and lit it. A row of mugs and a floral porcelain teapot sat on a shelf above the wooden kitchen worktop, and there was a chipped white tin marked ‘tea’ in block blue letters next to it that Carrie opened, letting out the aromatic tang of tea-leaves. She shook some into the teapot.
She needed to find a village shop of some kind, at least to get a pint of milk and a loaf of bread. She hadn’t planned much further than getting here, but now Carrie realised that she would have to be at least vaguely organised and remember where to buy food. She dimly recalled some local shops and a high street, and walking down into the village with Great-Aunt Maud, who had seemed to know everyone.
She sat down in a floral easy chair next to the kitchen table and looked at her phone. There was a message on the holiday rental app from the owner of the cottage, Gretchen Ross, hoping that she had found the cottage and let herself in okay.
I’ve arrived,Carrie messaged back.Just making tea in the kitchen.
Wonderful,the woman replied quickly.I’ve asked a neighbour to pop by with some essentials for you, but you can get food in the village and I’ve left the number for the milkman on the table with other contact numbers, if you need them.
You read my mind, Gretchen Ross, Carrie thought, tiredly. She’d flown up to Edinburgh from London on an early flight and hired a car from the airport, but it had still taken hours to get there and she’d been exhausted even before setting out. The grief made Carrie heavy, as if she were made of lead. She could hardly get out of bed for weeks after the crash, and that wasn’t just because she’d fractured her collarbone. In fact, the hospital had let her go home after just a few days, though she hadn’t wanted to. She’d wanted to stay, because the hospital was the last place she’d seen Claire’s face, and the last place that Claire had ever been.
Claire’s sudden absence in her life felt as though she’d lost her legs in the accident, or her heart had been cut out, but she was still, somehow, alive.
After, Carrie had had a recurring dream of Claire walking around the hospital, looking for a way out. She was trapped there, like a ghost looking for the light. In the dream, Carrie always tried to reach out for Claire, but her sister seemed unaware of her presence, despite Carrie screaming Claire’s name as loud as she could.
Once she got home, and after a week in bed feeling woozy from the hospital-prescribed painkillers, Carrie had realised that she couldn’t stay there. She shared a house with two counsellors, Patty and Marcus, who she’d met while on a meditation course her friend Suzy had dragged her to. They’d been looking for a flatmate at the same time Carrie’s lease had run out on her old place. They were both really sweet, but they had begun therapising her as soon as she’d got home. Carrie knew they’d meant well, but the pressure to share and talk was too much for her.
Do you want to talk about it?
No.
